


Down on the Shore

by indevan



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 17:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they go to the beach, it's to the Atlantic</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down on the Shore

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is really for no other reason than to talk about how much i like funnel cake and to indulge in headcanon

When they go to the beach, it’s in the Atlantic.  Not as blue on the Jersey Shore but it feels safer.  Calmer.  It isn’t, not really.  With the Breach closed, the dangers in the Pacific are shared by the Atlantic.  Jellyfish, sharks, the usual collection of underwater unknowns.  That’s just logic, though, and Raleigh has never really been one to thrive on logic.  He thrives on emotion and ideals and, to him, the Boardwalk--the Shore--feels safe.  He’s seen as much as the Pacific as he ever wants to.

The Atlantic is cold but it’s summer so it’s a welcome cold.  Raleigh stands up to his knees in the water and throws his arms wide to welcome a small swell of a wave.  It bumps up to lap at his thighs before sloshing gently to shore.  When it pulls back, he can see that the water disturbed a horseshoe crab making its way down the wet sand.  Raleigh stares at it and, for a moment, he sees a prototype Kaiju.  He blinks and it’s just a horseshoe crab.  Nothing special.  Just a creature that’s managed to stay pretty much the same for millions of years.

Mako is sitting on the beach on a towel.  They splashed each other before, leaning down low to dip their hands in the water and scooping upwards and laughing.  It feels good to laugh again.  He splashes to shore, taking great big steps, and stumbles up onto the towel laid out next to her.  Water drips off of him, turning little circles in the sand dark.

“Wanna get some funnel cake later?” he asks.

“We just ate.”

“I said ‘later.’”

She smiles softly and says, “You mean now.”

He shrugs rather than deny it because there’s really no hiding anything from Mako.  Not when they’ve been in each other’s heads.  When Raleigh was little, real little, before all of this happened, he and Yancy used to watch this anime on TV--Dragon Ball Z.  Yancy was mad on it but Raleigh was too young to really appreciate it since he got too impatient for things to happen.  One of the few storylines on it he remembered was when two of the characters performed a little dance and became one.  He never told anyone his theory since he can hardly remember the show and it wasn’t really the same as drifting but there were similarities.  Had to be equals--compatible.  Could feel your thoughts as one.

“You’ve never had funnel cake,” he says. “It is literally the greatest thing ever.”

“Literally?”

“Literally,” he says assuredly.

Raleigh stretches out on his towel and lets the sun bake him dry.  He feels Mako’s gaze on him and cracks one eye open, not realizing that he had closed them.  Without speaking, she gestures at his chest and, instinctively, Raleigh’s hands go to cover the chemical burns.  Remnants of that last, terrible battle.  He still gets nightmares but not as often as they were before the Rift closed.

“What are those from?” she asks and he realizes that she isn’t pointing to his burns.

Raleigh cranes his neck up and stares down at his sandy, wet chest.

“Alaska?” she prompts.

He rests his head back on the towel and shrugs.

“What all did you see in my head?”

“Hmm?”

Those memories aren’t usually there.  Sometimes with Yancy they cropped up since he was so important in all of it.

“They’re from my surgery,” he explains. “To remove my breasts.”

It’s easy to say it nonchalantly now.  Powerful, too.

“Remove...?”

“Top surgery,” he explains. “A lot of trans men get it.  I got mine before my official entry to the Rangers as kind of a gift to myself...Yancy helped out.  He bought me my first binder after he saw me trying to bind with ACE bandages.  Used a hefty chunk of his paycheck, too.”

Mako smiles softly as if sharing the memory and maybe there’s some drift hangover making it so.

“Ah.”

They sit in amiable silence for a moment, neither having to talk because they never need to.  Raleigh doesn’t have to question if Mako accepts his identity and she doesn’t question about what happened to that binder--the Yancy binder that stopped fitting long before he got his surgery--because she knows that it’s still kept in his personal belongings.

“So...” she says finally. “Funnel cake?”

Raleighs sits up excitedly.

“Yes!  Oh, man, Mako.  You’re gonna love it!”


End file.
